Aguilar v. Gaston-Camara

Appeal
from the United States District Court for the Eastern
District of Wisconsin. No. 2:14-cv-01273-NJ - Nancy Joseph,
Magistrate Judge.

Before
EASTERBROOK, ROVNER, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

ROVNER, Circuit Judge.

The
plaintiff, Daniel Aguilar, an inmate under the supervision of
the Wisconsin Department of Corrections ("DOC"),
filed a pro se complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983,
alleging that beginning in October 2012 he was confined for
90 days without a hearing based on a purported violation of
extended supervision. He argued that as a person who was
released from prison on parole status rather than extended
supervision status, his confinement under the extended
supervision provisions denied him the procedures that are
afforded to parolees, in violation of the Due Process Clause,
and violated his rights under the Eighth Amendment.

For
offenses committed prior to December 31, 1999, offenders in
Wisconsin are released from prison to "parole, "
whereas for offenses committed after January 1, 2000, the
offenders are released to "extended supervision."
Although the supervision for each status is essentially the
same, there are nevertheless some legal differences between
parole and extended supervision that dictate the punishments
available for a given rule violation. Aguilar was convicted
in 1996 and on February 23, 2010, he was released from prison
on parole. Accordingly, after his release from imprisonment,
Aguilar was subject to the parole provisions rather than the
extended supervision restrictions. When Aguilar failed to
report to his agent in violation of the rules of community
supervision, his parole agent, Janella Gaston-Camara,
completed a Violation Investigation Report in which she
properly checked the box indicating he was on "Parole,
" and that form was signed by her supervisor Mya Haessig
as well. On September 27, 2012, Aguilar was arrested by
chance when the Racine Police Department SWAT team executed a
search warrant on a bar allegedly being used for drug sales,
and the officers found Aguilar in a room adjacent to the bar.
On that day, Gaston-Camara completed an Order to Detain form
in which she erroneously checked the box indicating that
Aguilar was on "Extended Supervision, " rather than
the "Parole" designator. Aguilar subsequently met
with Gaston-Camara and admitted to violating rules including
absconding, moving without notifying his agent, and consuming
alcohol. When a person is under extended supervision, the
agent, with a supervisor's approval, may order the
offender confined for up to 90 days without a hearing if the
offender signs a statement admitting to violating a rule of
supervision. Initially, Gaston-Camara met with the
supervisor, Mya Haessig, and agreed that a disposition short
of confinement was the appropriate sanction, such as
electronic monitoring or the imposition of additional
conditions of supervision. Once they received information
from the Racine Police Department that Aguilar was being
charged with possession of THC and obstructing an officer,
however, they convened again and concluded that confinement
for 90 days was appropriate. They completed another form
which included that recommendation, again erroneously
identifying Aguilar as under extended supervision, and
forwarded that recommendation to Lisa Yeates, the Regional
Chief, who approved the sanction. Aguilar signed a statement
admitting that he violated the rules of his supervision, and
therefore the confinement was ordered without a hearing,
based on the erroneous assumption that he was under extended
supervision. Because he was not on extended supervision,
however, he was not subject to that 90-day option, (although
the law has since changed to allow imposition of a 90-day
sentence on parolees for admitted rules violations,
see Wise. Stat. § 304.06(3g)). That did not
necessarily work to his actual disadvantage. As a parolee, he
would have been subject to formal revocation procedures;
Gaston-Camara and Haessig confirmed that they would likely
have sought revocation of parole based on those charges, with
a likely revocation sentence of two years, rather than the
extended supervision sanction which resulted in his automatic
confinement for 90 days. But such speculation as to which
status would have been more advantageous is irrelevant to the
claim before us.

On
December 3, 2012, Aguilar's attorney, David Saldana,
contacted Gaston-Camara and inquired as to why Aguilar's
sanction began on October 17, 2012. One week later Saldana
contacted Donna Harris, the assistant regional chief for
Region 7, and asked her about the start date for the extended
release sanction for Aguilar. In response, Harris emailed to
Saldana language from the policy providing that an extended
supervision sanction starts when the regional chief signs the
sanction or within 10 days of apprehension, whichever is
first. Subsequently, on December 21, 2012, Saldana contacted
Yeates' regional office and requested that she amend the
start date of his extended supervision sanction to start on
October 7, 2012. Yeates ordered the amendment of the start
date as requested.

Aguilar
contends that in those conversations with Gaston-Camara,
Harris, and Yeates, Saldana also questioned whether Aguilar
was properly classified as under extended supervision. None
of those defendants recall any such topic of discussion in
those conversations. Gaston-Camara's written notes of her
phone conversation with Saldana relate only that he asked
about the starting date used to calculate Aguilar's
sanction. The email to Saldana from Harris in response to
their phone conversation relayed only portions of the DOC
procedure for calculating the sanction dates. And Yeates'
actions following the communication with Saldana addressed
only the dates of the sanction. Finally, because Aguilar was
assigned to Region 2, not Region 7, Harris stated that as
assistant regional chief in Region 7 she was not involved in
overseeing Aguilar's supervision, and Aguilar has
provided no evidence to the contrary.

To
support his contention that Saldana apprised them of the
classification error, Aguilar provided his own declaration to
the district court. In it, he attested that Saldana visited
him in jail and asked him why he was given an extended
supervision sanction when he was a parolee, and promised to
seek his release. Aguilar further stated that, subsequently,
Saldana informed Aguilar that he had made several attempts
over the past couple of weeks to contact some of the
defendants but was unable to do so because they were not in
the office, did not return his call, or were on vacation.
According to Aguilar, Saldana said that he had informed
Harris that Aguilar was unlawfully detained because the
sanction was proper only for a person on extended supervision
whereas Aguilar was on parole. According to Aguilar, Saldana
then reported that Harris responded that Aguilar would not be
released and that he was lucky his parole was not revoked.
The district court refused to consider those declarations, as
they were hearsay and Aguilar provided no statement or
affidavit from Saldana.

Months
after his release from the confinement on those violations,
Aguilar was arrested on various charges. After a parole
revocation hearing, the Division of Hearings and Appeals
determined that Aguilar violated the conditions of his parole
status and he was returned to Dodge Correctional Institution
to serve his sentence. He received jail credit that included
the time he had spent in jail in connection with the extended
supervision sanction. The crediting of all of that time
raises a question as to whether he suffered any actual injury
as a result of the extended supervision sanction, but as
neither the parties nor the district court addressed the
issue of the impact of that crediting and the claims fail on
other grounds, we will limit our discussion to those other
grounds.

Aguilar
asserts that the failure to properly classify him as on
parole status rather than extended supervision, which
resulted in his confinement without a hearing, violated his
rights under the Due Process Clause and the Eighth Amendment.
As the district court properly recognized, § 1983 does
not establish a system of vicarious liability; a public
employee's liability is premised on her own knowledge and
actions, and therefore requires evidence that each defendant,
through her own actions, violated the Constitution. Burks
v. Raemisch, 555 F.3d 592, 594 (7th Cir. 2009);
Ashcroft v. Iqbal,556 U.S. 662, 676 (2009). Three
of the defendants in this appeal held positions in the
DOC's Division of Community Corrections Region 2:
Gaston-Camara, Aguilar's probation and parole agent;
Haessig, the unit supervisor; and Yeates, the regional chief.
The other defendant, Donna Harris, was the DCC assistant
regional chief for Region 7. The district court granted the
motion for summary judgment as to all his claims against each
defendant, and Aguilar appeals to this court the summary
judgment determination.

We
review the grant of summary judgment de novo,
considering all facts and reasonable inferences in favor of
Aguilar as the non-moving party. Figgs v. Dawson,829 F.3d 895, 902 (7th Cir. 2016). We will affirm the grant
of summary judgment only if there are no genuine issues of
material fact and the defendants are entitled to judgment as
a matter of law. Id. Although we view the evidence
in the light most favorable to Aguilar, he nevertheless must
present specific facts showing that there is a genuine issue
for trial; "[i]nferences that rely upon speculation or
conjecture are insufficient." Armato v.
Grounds,766 F.3d 713, 719 (7th Cir. 2014).

To
succeed on his Eighth Amendment claim, Aguilar must provide
evidence that he was subjected to punishment (here,
additional incarceration) without penological justification
and that the defendants acted with deliberate indifference.
Id. at 721; Campbell v. Peters, 256 F.3d
695, 700 (7th Cir. 2001). The actions that Aguilar challenges
in this case are the designation of him as on extended
supervision status and the refusal to correct the error.
Aguilar acknowledges that the "central question" in
this appeal is whether he has raised a genuine issue of
material fact that the defendants were deliberately
indifferent to the evidence that Aguilar was misclassified as
an extended supervision offender when he was in fact on
parole and thus entitled to the procedural protections
commensurate with that status. The district court properly
concluded that Aguilar failed to establish any such issue of
fact.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"To
be considered on summary judgment, evidence must be
admissible at trial, though &#39;the form produced at summary
judgment need not be admissible.&#39;" Cairel v.
Alder den,821 F.3d 823, 830 (7th Cir. 2016)(quoting
Wragg v. Village of Thornton,604 F.3d 464, 466 (7th
Cir. 2010)). The only admissible evidence of deliberate
indifference presented to the district court by Aguilar is
that the forms ordering his detention and ordering the
sanction, although identifying his as on extended
supervision, also indicate his date of conviction which-if
noticed-should have alerted them that Aguilar was a parole
offender. As to the conflict between the date of conviction
and the box checked on the form that indicated he was an
extended supervision offender, Aguilar presented no evidence
that anyone noticed that discrepancy. In fact, Gaston-Camara
and Haessig both submitted statements that they were unaware
that he was on parole status and only became aware of the
discrepancy when he filed the lawsuit. We are left with
nothing more than mere speculation that any of the defendants
might have noticed the disconnect between the date of his
offense and the ...

Our website includes the first part of the main text of the court's opinion.
To read the entire case, you must purchase the decision for download. With purchase,
you also receive any available docket numbers, case citations or footnotes, dissents
and concurrences that accompany the decision.
Docket numbers and/or citations allow you to research a case further or to use a case in a
legal proceeding. Footnotes (if any) include details of the court's decision. If the document contains a simple affirmation or denial without discussion,
there may not be additional text.

Buy This Entire Record For
$7.95

Download the entire decision to receive the complete text, official citation,
docket number, dissents and concurrences, and footnotes for this case.